DO NOT Support "Our" Troops: The Toxicity of
Center-Rightists, Liberals, and the Establishment Left by The Glorious
Revolutionary Federation of Fortune 500 Killer's Anti-Imperialist League
www.dissidentvoice.org
November 25, 2004

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Pamphlet #1 in a new AIL
Series: "Revolutionary Self-Criticism and Ideological Purge-Purification:
Painful but Necessary"

INTRODUCTION: THE
IDEOLOGICAL CRISIS

Time for some house
cleaning. The American imperialist project has reached new levels of
viciousness, inhumanity, and immorality with support, explicitly and
implicitly expressed, from all quarters of the American political
spectrum.

Rather than burden the
Federation rank-and-file and sympathizers with a meanderingly obvious
screed against the war criminals currently occupying the White House, the
Federation instead has chosen to aim its polemical energy at an overlooked
target: insidious counter-revolutionary elements who APPEAR to be our
allies, but upon closer inspection, ultimately reinforce American empire
as much -- while getting away with it.

All Federation members
and sympathizers, if they have not done so, should loan or purchase Noam
Chomsky's 1969 anti-Vietnam War classic, American Power and the New
Mandarins. In this work, Chomsky delineated two strains of anti-war
thought: 1) radical strains that repudiated the war on principle for its
imperialist assumptions and original stated raison d'etre (all regardless
of outcome or level of success) and 2) the pragmatic-practical
liberal-bourgeois strains that escalated protest because the war became
increasingly unsuccessful, prolonged, expensive, or politically costly.
With slight modification, we can apply this model for analyzing the
motivations of those who purport to be against war to the present imperial
excursion into Iraq.

It is imperative that we
not be hoodwinked and fooled by the unprincipled "anti-war" thought of
organizations and characters like MoveOn.org and former partisans of
Howard Dean and John Kerry. Equally important is the development of
immunity to the nonsensical "Support Our Troops" mantra emanating from
many center-right, liberal, and establishment left circles. Regardless of
personal or familial ties, it is impossible to "support" direct agents and
executors of a racist-imperialist war crime.

These two topics will
form the subject of this pamphlet, the first in a new Federation series to
which all readers are encouraged to contribute.

PHONY ANTI-WAR OPINION

When encountering one who
professes to hold anti-war views, one should query the individual for
specificity. The results are frequently revealing and unpleasant.

Most responses do not
repudiate the notion of pre-emptive war and its racist contempt for Iraqi
self-determination. They instead adopt the following lines:

* That the war was "not
adequately planned," particularly after the initial invasion, the
implication, stated or not, being that if it were, then the imperial
excursion might have somehow been acceptable.

* That weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) were not found, the implication, stated or not, being
that if they were, then the imperial excursion might have somehow been
acceptable.

* That the war is costing
unexpectedly large sums of money, the implication, stated or not, being
that if it could be conducted on the cheap, then the imperial excursion
might have somehow been acceptable.

* That the war is taking
longer than the originally projected six months, the implication, stated
or not, being that if it could quickly and tidily, then the imperial
excursion might have somehow been acceptable.

* That the war was
conducted in a "unilateral way" "without allies" by our President, and
that had the United States gone through an imperialist body like the
United Nations or NATO, the latter instrumental to the illegal imperialist
excursion into Kosovo, then the Iraqi imperial excursion might have
somehow been acceptable. Beating up someone alone: not cool. Beating up
someone "multilaterally" with a group of like-minded thugs: kosher, goes
this logic, embraced by the likes of Howard Dean, MoveOn, John Kerry, and
their devoted cults.

None of these
unprincipled strains holds up to much scrutiny, and from them, one can
easily extend logically to pro-war positions. It is these unprincipled
strains, however, that dominate political conversation from the
center-rightists, the liberals, and the establishment left. As
revolutionaries, we need to actively resist deferring to them. Only one
position ought be acceptable to us: the complete repudiation of the
pre-emptive war doctrine regardless of practical outcome, and two, a
corollary, the advocacy of completely removing ALL impediments to
self-determination for potential targets for the US "friendly" imperialist
project, such as deadly embargoes, sanctions, and support for totalitarian
(and often pro-capitalist) dictators.

ANTI-WAR RACISM AND
THE CASE OF MICHAEL MOORE

An equally unsettling
notion -- but one that we must confront -- is that racist elements pollute
and degrade large segments of American anti-war thought. We must
differentiate ourselves explicitly and forthrightly from these noxious
tendencies.

The first tendency
consists of apologists for the occupation. Some who say "the war was
wrong" (almost always along the lines previously stated above) now argue
that the US occupation is nonetheless necessary, "that we must stay the
course," "finish the job," and "can't just pack up and leave." Again,
such is the line adopted by the Kerry-MoveOn-Dean wing of the
center-right-liberal-establishment-left spectrum. The underlying racist
assumption is that Iraqis cannot govern themselves without the benevolent
paternalist (and, presumably, superior) meddling of the United States.
But as the social revolutions in Brazil, Venezuela, and Indonesia are
demonstrating, even after decades of grave repression, social regeneration
can occur WITHOUT the oversight of the benevolent United States
empire-monster (no thanks, please). The apologists for the occupation
claim that the "insurgents" must be quelled without mentioning that 1) the
primary reason behind their efforts is ejection of the United States, that
2) their primary recruitment source is (rightful) anger over the United
States and private United States business interests' presence, and that 3)
the majority of the Iraqi population supports both the ejection of the
United States and the broad resistance to it. Rather than continue an
incompetent and racist occupation, the United States ought:

a) Pay MASSIVE material
reparations for devastation of their country: first by Reaganite support
for Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, then Clintonian bombing and sanctions
throughout the 1990s, and finally, Bush imperialism of the 21st century.

b) Ban all American
private enterprise from Iraqi construction or energy and instead allow
Iraqi enterprise to re-develop the country and its economy.

The second tendency of
Racist Anti-war Thought (RAT, which is what it resembles) is the excessive
emphasis placed on American troops, who in the past year have been
directly implicated in systematic torture, humiliation of enemy combatants
who have surrendered, and activities defined clearly as war crimes under
the Geneva Conventions and international human rights law. The political
devolution of sell-out filmmaker Michael Moore, who supported war criminal
Wesley Clark for President before becoming a Ralph Nader-baiting partisan
automaton for war criminal John Kerry, is a useful lens to examine this
second RAT tendency. Moore deserved accolades for including brutal images
of US military terror and its Iraqi civilian consequences in his recent
film, "Fahrenheit 9/11." Unfortunately, the overarching framework of that
film and sell-out filmmaker Moore's subsequent web site pronouncements and
book projects leave much to be desired. Moore, like so many people in the
center-right-liberal-establishment-left spectrum, places undue or total
emphasis on American troops, but makes little mention of the far higher
level of Iraqi civilian casualties and injuries the imperial project has
caused at the hands of these very American troops. Moore ends his film,
for examples, with "Will they [the American troops] ever trust us again?"
and this is the title of the new American troop-centric book he has
recently published. Besides racist hierarchizing of American troops'
welfare over that of Iraqi civilians, this critique fails to mention "the
troops" and their disgusting behavior. The brutal details of the Fallujah
decimation (a military victory via wholesale razing and devastation rather
than any tactical ingenuity) are beginning to emerge. One précis of a
firsthand accounts reads:

"Aside from the usual killing, the Marines
made a point of wrecking every house they searched, blowing holes in every
bare wall they could find, and leaving bloody footprints on the floor of a
mosque (where shoes aren't allowed) and shitting there.

It's not enough to kill people in great
quantities, they want to humiliate the survivors too."

To ignore this barbaric
behavior while ethnocentrically urging support for its executors while
devoting little to no focus to its victims is profoundly racist. We will
explore this contradiction below.

SUPPORT OUR TROOPS
(YOU MEAN WAR CRIMINALS? NUH-UH)

This brings us to the
conclusion of this Glorious Revolutionary Pamphlet: a discussion of
imperial agents -- i.e. the "troops" -- and the call by many of the
center-right-liberal-establishment-left spectrum to "support" them.

No. No. No.

There exists a question
that all those of the "Support the Troops" tendency must confront: how
does one "support" troops executing a grotesque and inhumane collective
war crime?

The Federation cannot
support agents of the following: destruction of civilian hospitals,
destruction of civilian water and energy supplies, destruction and razing
of civilian homes, prison torture and humiliation, and military orders to
shoot without regard for whether potential targets are "hostile." The
Federation cannot support agents of barbaric behavior such as that
described in the anti-Hugo Chavez London Independent (hardly a bastion of
radical sentiment) below:

"Mr Tellaib, 33, a
merchant, said: 'We were stopped, in a line of cars, by some Humvees which
had overtaken us. One soldier waved us forward, but as I drove up there
was firing from another Humvee. I was shot in the side of the head, and my
wife and elder son were shot in the chest. I think they must have died
then. There was blood all over my eyes. I lost control of the car which
fell into the river. I managed to get out, and then tried to get the
others out, but I could not and the car sank."

The only troops deserving
of "support" and who deserve the term "war hero" are those who disobey
orders and resist this war. It is impossible otherwise to support the
troops when the troops are carrying out war crimes and are thus war
criminals themselves, some individually, all collectively. "We were just
following orders" did not work for the Nazis -- it should not work for the
American troops, either.

CONCLUSION

The Federation hopes this
pamphlet series helps us identify counter-revolutionary elements disguised
as "progressive" forces. Those interesting in contributing to the series
are encouraged to do so.

end communiqué

The Glorious Revolutionary Federation of Fortune 500 Killers
is an anti-racist, anti-capitalist student insurgent group based at Columbia
University. For more information, e-mail
ceodeath99@yahoo.com. Visit their website at:
www.fortune500killers.org.